This is my personal blog. I was Branch Secretary of Lambeth UNISON from 1992 to 2017 and a member of the National Executive Council (NEC) of UNISON, the public service union (www.unison.org.uk) from 2003 to 2017.
I am Chair of Brighton Pavilion Constituency Labour Party and of the Sussex Labour Representation Committee (LRC).
Neither the Labour Party nor UNISON is responsible for the contents of this personal blog. (Nor is my employer!)

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Saturday, June 24, 2017

Time for the Green Party to affiliate to the Labour Party

Now that I am no longer a UNISON representative I think I should turn my talent for writing controversial blog posts which may upset people to the sphere of my Labour Party activity. As regular readers will know, everything I say here is only my own personal opinion and so what I say here I say as an individual Labour Party member and not as Chair of my Constituency Labour Party (CLP).

One of the pleasures of the
recent General Election campaign was meeting my old history teacher (and
centenarian) Len Goldman. Len, who has given a lifetime to the struggle for
socialism, wrote
recently to the Grauniad to express the view that; “In the ‘30s we built a united front against fascism. Today’s
inheritors of the fascist mantle need to be fought in the same non-sectarian
way. Away with party shibboleths, which often hide real intentions. The Labour
MPs who helped the Tories by denigrating their democratically elected
leader are a prime example. Labour should at least unite with the Greens
and welcome others who are prepared to defend the victims of the Tory onslaught
and build a fairer, more democratic society. Caroline Lucas is
certainly nearer to the intentions of the originators of the Labour party than
those MPs I have mentioned.”

Len’s views are clearly
shared by many on the left, including many within the Labour Party both
nationally and locally. Unfortunately, however, this has been translated into
support for a so-called “progressive alliance” which appears to entail one
party (or more than one party) standing down in favour of other “progressive”
parties. The fact that protagonists of this approach appear to include the
Liberal Democrats (late of Coalition fame) within the definition of “progressive”
does more damage to an inherently flawed concept.

It is one thing to vote
tactically for a Party you like less than your first choice in order to defeat
an even worse enemy – but quite another to deny your supporters the chance to
vote for their first choice because you want to dragoon them into such tactical
voting whether they want it or not. Those who thought that Labour should have
stood aside for the incumbent Green MP in Brighton Pavilion have to face the
reality that, whilst she increased her vote, share and majority, Labour came second and held a
vote from 15,000 local people (many of whom might not have voted Green had we
accepted the argument to step aside).

As we face the possibility
of an early General Election, it is worth looking at the relationship between
the Green Party and Labour nationally as well as locally in order to consider
what we should be doing to avoid unnecessary division between those who want to
see Jeremy Corbyn as Prime Minister. A Corbyn led Government will not only face every obstacle beforehand but also sabotage from the deep state, the media barons, the wealthy and their fifth column in our movement after the election. It is worth looking at every opportunity to unite those who will support such a Government both before and after its election.

The Green Party, outside
Brighton Pavilion Constituency face an almost existential threat from the
willingness of their former supporters to switch to Labour under the leadership
of Jeremy Corbyn – in the General Election the party with the most
lost deposits was the Greens, they only saved their deposit in 11 of the
466 constituencies they contested. Given that you only need 5% of the vote to
save a deposit this indicates that the Greens have been marginalised
nationally.

In the Isle of Wight, where
Caroline Lucas had argued that Labour should step aside for the Greens they got
17.3% of the vote, more than 4,000 votes behind the second placed Labour
candidate in a safe Tory seat. Nationally the Green vote fell by more than
half. There were fewer Green Party voters
in the 2017 General Election than there are Labour Party members (and that means individual members and takes no account of
three million affiliated trade unionists).

There is no prospect
whatsoever of the Greens winning any more Members of Parliament without a
change in the electoral system unless Labour abandons its current socialist
policies. The electoral base of the Greens, to the extent that it exists in a
few localities was built largely at Labour’s expense in areas where radical
voters saw an effective means to express dissatisfaction with New Labour’s
obsessions with privatisation and imperialism. Now that Labour has a socialist
Leader and a social democratic programme for Government that electoral base is
melting like snow in spring.

Of course the situation
within Brighton Pavilion is unique. Caroline Lucas is proven to be a popular
local MP, twice re-elected with an increased majority and (whilst some of us in
the Labour Party might think some of the Green’s electoral campaigning tactics
mirror the worst of the Liberal Democrats) plainly impregnable in the immediate
future on the basis of the current constituency boundaries. Many Labour
supporters in Brighton Pavilion (mistakenly in the view of your blogger, but not in their view)
believe that they can support Jeremy Corbyn by voting for Caroline Lucas (and
not only because some of them may have believed the lie that there was a risk of a Tory MP in
Pavilion).

In these circumstances, and
taking account of the seismic change in both the Labour Party and national
politics through which we are living, the answer to the question posed (and
answered so unconvincingly) by protagonists of the “Progressive Alliance” is
that the Green Party should affiliate to the Labour Party in the same way the Co-operative Party does. The Co-op Party
has 38
MPs, all of whom also sit as Labour MPs. If the Green Party came to the
same electoral agreement with Labour as the Co-op Party they would put themselves
on a fast track to increasing their Parliamentary representation compared to
their current strategy of electoral isolation whilst waving the mangy carrot of
the “Progressive Alliance” at an uninterested Labour Party.

Perhaps if we had some
system of proportional representation there would be room for more than one
progressive political party, between which alliances might be formed, but in
2017 that is not an option. The ball is in the court of the Green Party and its
lone MP, but if that ball is served to the Labour Party we should be prepared
to return it in a very positive way.